Tapit shouldn't be favourite - Dickinson
Michael Dickinson says the bookmakers have got it wrong in making Tapit favourite for the 130th running of the Kentucky Derby.
The son of Pulpit won Saturday’s $750,000 (€628,200) Grade One Wood Memorial at Aqueduct and is now 9-2 favourite with William Hill to land the 10-furlong event at Churchill Downs on May 1.
But the Maryland trainer insists that on all known form, the layers have over-estimated the grey’s last-to-first half-length victory over Master David.
“He is 4-1 favourite in Vegas, but he shouldn’t be favourite,” said Dickinson. “They don’t know what I know.”
Tapit has been plagued by injury and illness since winning the Grade Three Laurel Futurity last season.
He suffered a sore shin which delayed his seasonal reappearance and when he eventually reached the track in mid-March, he finished a very disappointing sixth to Friends Lake in the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park.
“We found he was suffering from a pretty serious lung infection afterwards and to be perfectly honest, he’s only just really got over it,” explained Dickinson. “So I was delighted with his run on Saturday.
“Touch wood, he has come out of the race well, but I was seriously worried beforehand, petrified in fact, because he is a very good horse and had really only done one and a half breezes in four weeks.
"He had been a pretty sick horse beforehand and I would have been over the moon to have been third.”
Tapit’s victory ensures that Dickinson will have the opportunity of having his first runner in the initial leg of America’s Triple Crown, but the Tapeta Farm handler says he has reservations about Tapit’s ability to land the ‘Run for the Roses’.
“He won’t run before the Derby and will be shipped in pretty close to the race – a few days before – but we don’t know that we are really good enough,” admits the trainer. “Tapit has to improve quite a lot, but he is full of potential.”
